Lady Centaur's Lament

The last time I was unable to ride my bike for a while (2 weeks waiting for it to get back from Kansas City) I remarked that I felt like a lady centaur, cursed to live as a human. That first ride once I got my bicycle back felt incredible- once again I was able to travel faster, further and taller than my merely human self. It has now been more than four months since I’ve been able to ride and my inner centaur is not happy. I’ve been looking for cheap, used bike but haven’t found one yet. And there are other potential obstacles:

1. The rainy season=bad weather for biking, though thankfully that has now ended. However windy season is also giving me pause.
2. Usually when I see cyclists here, they look like they are in training for something daunting, like the mountain stage of the Tour de France. They tend to travel in packs and they ride serious bikes, wear serious gear and have serious muscles. If that’s what it takes to be a cyclist in Costa Rica, I won’t have the time or the money.
3. The drivers here drive very fast and they do not seem to care how close they get to pedestrians let alone cyclists. It’s as if every driver were a cab driver. I think this is why the cyclists travel in groupsL. It makes them more visible and increases the odds of there being someone available to call an ambulance.
4. The road up to school has a lot of steep ups and downs, but not enough of the latter to push me up the former. In fact, someone told me it’s one of the most difficult mountain biking roads in Central America. Chicago, as many of you know, is flat. Flat, flat, flat. In order to actually bike to school, I would need to go into training. As if I were training for the mountain stage of the Tour de France. (I can hear my friend and fellow centaurian Laxmi right now saying, “Do it! Bike up the mountain! Come on!)

I’ll keep looking for a bike. Maybe a bunch of people will get new ones for Christmas and I can pick up someone’s spare. I could at least bike around town and I could work on climbing the mountain on the weekends. I want my lady centaur legs back.